India's ecommerce market will be worth $32 billion in 2018, according to statistics from eMarketer. This is still small compared to the US, where eMarketer estimates Amazon alone will clear $258.22 billion in revenue, but the important number to look at is growth. India's ecommerce sales will rise 31% year on year this year, putting it behind only China and Indonesia. Adobe stats peg US ecommerce growth this year at around 18% year on year so far.

That makes India an extremely important focal point for US companies seeing their home markets slowly level off, and looking for future growth. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in 2016 that the company would funnel $5 billion into its Indian ecommerce operation. The company doesn't break out Indian revenue in its financials, but its overseas operating losses show that the company is willing to lose money in order to beat local players.

Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy

Reuters/Saumya Khandelwal

It's that attitude which appears to have the Indian government alarmed.

China, another potential source of major growth, has created safeguards for its homegrown firms. As a result, the likes of Tencent, Alibaba, and Meituan dominate their home market and are worth billions — while foreign US firms struggle to achieve the same market share.

In India, major ecommerce firm Flipkart was acquired by Walmart for $16 billion.

And Vijay Shekhar Sharma, India's youngest billionaire and founder of ecommerce payments firm Paytm, hit out at foreign rivals in February. He wrote that India "must not let them colonise our Internet."

Tweet Embed: //twitter.com/mims/statuses/963838964514701312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw India must welcome global tech companies and must not let them colonise our Internet. Their ambitions and intentions are clear in last few weeks ! https://t.co/bbZJIaloqf